cruelty is infinite
by kingslayers
Summary: but it's about you and me, so it's a love story, no matter what we do. / rose weasley still addresses her thoughts to him, despite everything. —rosescorpius, regarding the thin lines between hate and love and gods and monsters.


**written for:** i wrote this an exceedingly long time ago so i doubt it's for anything or anyone, which is probably a good thing.

**warnings/notes: **swearing, first person, no capital letters, and i wish i could tell you that this satisfies me or follows any sort of plan or path. this has been sitting on my ipod for an extremely long time now and i am publishing it because i am sick of my life being full of unfinished things.

**disclaimer:** disclaimed.

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><p><strong>rose x scorpius<strong>

_somehow, even now, i still address my thoughts to you_

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><p>did you know that i have fully-functioning tear ducts?<p>

no man is worth my tears, i told you once, and certainly not the boy you had been but sometimes i cry for you nonetheless.

i don't break my promise, though; i never cry because of the pain you cause me, or out of remembrance for an acquaintanceship we once shared.

i cry for you and for me and for all else we have touched and everything we could have been and now never will be.

i don't delude myself into thinking i could have made you better. that probably surprises you. you always used to shout that i should have been a gryffindor with my arrogance.

but i digress because houses are only naming words and they don't matter to any who can see past a label.

all that matters is all we are and how far we've fallen from the kids we were.

and perhaps that doesn't make sense because according to the press you're blatantly fucking my cousin and i'm nominated for four awards and it's only been eleven months since i graduated from the wizarding academy of the performing arts and really this shouldn't be considered lower than what we were.

but somehow fucking molly isn't making you happy, and somehow being nominated for prestigious awards isn't making me happy and we lead fucked up lives if the happiest we've been in recent memory is when we used to scream abuse at each other and i made people cry just because and you charmed them into thinking you were some kind of fucking martyr for the sins of your family and we made a game of breaking hearts and drinking alcohol until nothing made sense.

and surely we should be happier now because you're fucking molly weasley (the second) and everyone knows it and i'm going to be a star and everyone knows that too.

unfortunately, i can't seem to figure out how to be happy when you're not around telling me i'm a cruel bitch with no heart. it's sort of sad, but mostly pathetic.

and lily told me that dominique told her that freddie told her that roxanne told him that hugo told her that louis told him that lucy told him that james told her that albus told him that teddy told him that victoire told him that molly told her that you're listless and well-trained and fucking perfect but of course that got disputed along the way because maybe molly's beautiful but lily and albus and lucy and james and louis know you and they understand that listless does not equal perfect in the world of scorpius malfoy, which enunciates how incompatible you are with molly weasley (the second) far more clearly than any words i could ever hope to spill.

and if you're listless, well, you're not the scorpius malfoy i knew in school which is a real shame in some ways, because i think i could have almost loved him, if i'd tried.

maybe it's for the best that you aren't him though, because then i'd probably do something stupid like quit drinking and smoking and cussing for long enough to crash dominique's birthday party and proclaim some kind of never-ending abusive affection for you. thank god we both know i'd never give up swearing and vodka. i could live without a smoke because it's fucking disgusting and i only ever did it because the smoke reminded me of your eyes. i don't know if i ever told you that.

it's funny, the things we have no problem saying when we know they hold no meaning anymore. there's something that's almost sad about the cowardice of saying something only when you know it won't change anything, but i never claimed to be courageous.

if you want courage, you'd best be fucking victoire.

which is an almost roundabout way for me to ask you why molly? don't get me wrong - - i love my cousin. she's great.

cancel that. there's no point in lying to you about what i think. molly is not great. molly is sweet and sugary and blonde and predictable and wears her heart on her sleeve and she's safe because since when does molly weasley (the second) ever call anybody out on their shit?

don't worry; i'm neither drunk nor deluded enough to kid myself into thinking i'm great. i am a homicidal, abusive, violent, wild, uncontrollable, unpredictable, jealous, incorrigible, snarky, sarcastic, bitchy, red-headed, cat-hating, tempestuous slytherin with a penchant for swearing, drinking, smoking and throwing dangerous animals at peoples' heads. i am arrogant and cruel and a compulsive liar and a heart-breaker and just generally an unfeeling bitch that - what did finnigan say? - "doesn't care about anything or anyone". well, except you. i am reckless and irresponsible and probably the worst thing in the world for someone that wants safety in his relationships because rose weasley is not safe.

i suppose you might've changed enough to want to settle for someone that won't push you or pressure you. i wouldn't blame you. how could i? i'm nothing more than a mirror image of you, with flaws and faults thrown into greater relief and an extra helping of murderous intent.

did you know that albus used to call us soulmates?

i don't know what the boy was thinking because that was when you were two-timing the chang sisters and i was screaming down the walls whenever anyone tried to broach the subject of love to me because love simply could not exist.

do you believe in love, scorpius? i think i'm drunk because that is both far too intelligent and far too imbecilic for me to ever say sober and i tend to find contradictions in terms easiest to handle when i am drunk and therefore not to be held responsible for the words spilling from my lips.

you used to tell me that reasoning was bullshit.

you were right. of course.

this detracts from my question, i think. all the ramblings that spill from lips loosened by alcohol never really get us anywhere. so do you believe in love, scorpius?

molly believes in love. she believes that she'll get a fairytale with her prince charming and he'll sweep her off her feet and they'll have a big, shiny wedding surrounded by family as well as anyone that was in school at the same time as them as well as all the schoolmates' families and friends. i personally think she just wants to get married with all of fucking britain present. she wants a beautifully romantic honeymoon and her first child to be conceived there. of course, the kid must be a perfectly behaved little blonde boy that hates dirt and enjoys going shopping with mummy and she can call him angel. she wants three kids: two boys and a little baby girl. she wants boring names like _sarah_ and _anne_ and _benjamin_ and _matthew_ and _mark_ and _jack_ and absolutely nothing that could make them be picked from a crowd, like scorpius or victoire or albus. she wants them to grow up and be sweet children that turn into sweet teenagers and then sweet adults that marry their undoubtedly perfect childhood sweethearts and she will have eight perfect grandchildren and she'll die with her husband at age seventy-four, before she can get too ugly, and they'll have spent their whole lives in the uk except for their honeymoon in paris and that is her fairytale.

this might be just me, though i think it's you too, but i can't see you fitting into this fairytale.

for one thing, you were not a sweet teenager nor child if your father is to be believed and i highly doubt you're a sweet adult so your children aren't likely to be sweet because since when has there ever been a sweet malfoy?

as for only going to uk and paris, i guess that means goodbye to all the exploring of the world we fantasised about at age fifteen, lying down in the meadow by your manor and staring at the stars.

i could keep going but i don't think you need a reminder of how well i know you.

molly acts like she's forgotten.

did you know that she thinks your favourite colour is grey?

grey isn't even a colour. it's an absence of colour but it isn't even a full absence of colour because it cannot be arsed to be black. it is a colourless colour that defines malfoys but not scorpius and how can you be with someone that defines you as malfoy first and doesn't even bother with scorpius except for when giving ridiculous nicknames?

you have two favourite colours. i bet that's something molly didn't expect in her predictable fairytale, her prince charming being complex.

you love blue like the colour of your mum's eyes and the colour of the lake twenty-seven kilometres north of your manor. you love the blue that shows up in weasley wizard wheezes mood rings when someone is feeling mischievous. you love the blue that is the colour of the satchel you carried around all of fifth year and that i scrawled on every single day. you love the blue in the ravenclaw ties and you love the blue like the dress i wore to the yule ball in fifth year.

your other favourite colour is green. the green like the glow in the common room from being under the lake. the green like the slytherin ties and dorms and quidditch robes. green like your father's favourite tablecloth and the colour of albus' car. green like my eyes, and the gown i wore to graduation to throw the black and white theme into the head girl's face. serves the bitch right for using you.

you love blue and green and they represent different facets of your life and really, you're far more sentimental than anybody's ever given you credit for.

the horrifying thing about this situation, of course, is that i know you better than i want to. i could ink a map of your flaws on the back of your hand and embrace each contour like an old friend.

do you know me, scorpius? i used to think you knew me best, the way i knew you. now i'm not so sure.

albus sees right through me and i can tell louis anything and know he'll get it, but you're the one i always counted on as being exactly the same as me.

remember when i kissed your cousin? i was drunk and it was a mistake and dominique cried herself to sleep because she was more in love with leonardo then than we've ever felt in our lives. i wanted to kiss you, except i didn't, because i'm not a fucking cliché. except maybe i am, because look at me now: twenty-three years old and all alone, telling a love story about two best friends who came from rival families.

you're fucking my cousin and i would rather put out a cigarette on my arm than say i miss you, but it's about you and me, so it's a love story, no matter what we do.

and i will never tell you i love you as you are because the truth is, i don't. i hate you as you are. i hate that you're fucking molly and that you haven't talked to me in a year and a half and that you gave up on me and that you don't give a fuck anymore. i hate that, i hate you. i don't want you.

but we are not defined by our limitations, but by our potentials. according to that sitcom that roxanne's obsessed with, anyway. i don't know if i believe that but if i did, i'd have to believe in us because it's always been you and me at the end of the world. and if that's not a love story, i don't know what is.

so i don't love you, but i could have, and you don't love me, but you don't love molly either.

that bitch told lucy she'd ask me to be maid of honour if you proposed. if you value her life, you never will, because i will cut her in half if she tries.

then again, what could illustrate what a sham your relationship is better than that? the person you once said was the only person you could ever imagine being with for all eternity, standing next to the shrew you exchange your vows of eternal imprisonment with.

though if you ever marry molly, you'll be so far from the boy you were that i don't even know if you'd recognise yourself in memories. i know i'm being a bitch about molly but i'm a bitch about everyone and even though i mean every single word i have said, i still love her. it's not her fault that she honestly believes in you and thinks that you mean all your touches and that your kisses are promises. well, it is, but i can hardly blame her for it—look at me, twenty-three years old and i still don't know how to quit you.

are we a tragedy? i forget. i have this vague recollection that tragedies require sympathetic characters, though, which we certainly do not qualify as. in another life, one where i am not the daughter of the golden ones and you are not the repetition of a would-be murderer, we could have been thieves or villains or kings and queens, but no matter what mask we wore, we would have always been what we are today: something less than whole, straddling the impossibly thin line between gods and monsters.

you once told me cruelty was immortal and the one thing that could always be counted on was that the register of human sins would be infinite, and i do not disagree, except for the fact that we are personifications of cruelty and human sin but i do not feel immortal, and nor do i wish to be.

we may not be a tragedy, but we are a love story: you and me at the end of everything, with no way to prevent the apocalypse.

this is why molly is of no relevance, except for the ache in my heart: congratulations, by the way, for managing to dig your way under the skin of even the most unfeeling of women. but molly does not change the fact that it is you and me, forever, even though some days i wish she did. i do not want to care about you, scorpius, because nothing about you deserves to be cared for; you are a reflection of me, after all, and what is true for me must be true for you too.

you are a promise of pain and wicked smiles and apathy in the face of despair and i am unbridled madness guised in the golden silk of a heroic legacy and constellations could be found by mapping the people we have hurt, including ourselves.

you have matching cracks to the cuts on my heart and i know when you are bored of the silk-spun fairytale that is this life you have crafted for yourself, apathetic rich boy and slytherin prince, courting wizarding britain's pearly princess, you will be at the docks, and i will be waiting.

i would like to think that i wouldn't, that i would have escaped my fate and abandoned you there with the salty water spraying over your fucking aristocratic face, and i will try that, but even if i am the girl who could create nightmares and destroy the courage of the most scarlet of lions—

i am twenty three years old and still do not know how to quit you.

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><p><strong>a note from the author:<strong> i'm sorry that you made it to here because it means you read all that. please do not favourite without reviewing, and if you've read this, i would really appreciate a review. thanks.


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